Cate Wiley

Cate Wiley

Cate Wiley moved from Denver to New York City in 2020, just in time for the coronavirus. Her most recent play, "Far Enough," was streamed as part of the One-Minute Play Festival Coronavirus Play series. Her latest full-length, "Two Truths and a Lie," set in an adult education memoir-writing class, will premiere at Theatre Unbound in Minneapolis in 2021. "The Liberation," which...
Cate Wiley moved from Denver to New York City in 2020, just in time for the coronavirus. Her most recent play, "Far Enough," was streamed as part of the One-Minute Play Festival Coronavirus Play series. Her latest full-length, "Two Truths and a Lie," set in an adult education memoir-writing class, will premiere at Theatre Unbound in Minneapolis in 2021. "The Liberation," which premiered at The Ballard Underground in Seattle in 2018, is set in Paris, at the time of the 2015 terrorist attack on the Bataclan nightclub, and addresses the sexual shaming of women. An earlier play, "Sheltered," is based on stories by homeless women and was a finalist for the 2019 Fratti-Newman Political Play Contest at the Castillo Theater in New York. A short, "Note to Self," won the 2020 Itinerant Theatre "Life Inspired" Series and will be published by Smith and Kraus. A site-specific two-hander, "The Wine Snob," was recorded for a Colorado Public Radio feature, and another play, "Homing," has also been heard on the radio. Cate studied community-based theater at Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, working on the production of At-Traction in the Los Angeles Arts District. She taught American and British drama and women writers in the English Department at the University of Colorado Denver for over twenty years, and is a member of The Dramatists Guild and the WOW Café Theater Collective.


Plays

  • Like Horses
    Two neighbors, on their balconies, one above and one below. One Black, one white; one with a great view; one who can barely see the sky. They live in the same building, but do they live in the same country?
  • Two Truths and a Lie
    Di really needs to stop living in her car. She takes on a night class in memoir at Mohawk Community College, hoping to land a full-time teaching job. Her mismatched students bring their own agendas to class: Samantha doodles instead of writing, when she isn’t high; George comes late; Bobbi talks too much, May barely says a word; and Eileen threatens to quit because Di is not the famous man who was supposed to...
    Di really needs to stop living in her car. She takes on a night class in memoir at Mohawk Community College, hoping to land a full-time teaching job. Her mismatched students bring their own agendas to class: Samantha doodles instead of writing, when she isn’t high; George comes late; Bobbi talks too much, May barely says a word; and Eileen threatens to quit because Di is not the famous man who was supposed to teach. Everybody has histories to reveal. Some of them are even true. When violence claims one of the group, are stories enough to put things back together?
  • Note to Self
    Zoe wants to jump and Jerry wants to stop her. Why would a healthy-looking young woman want to do such a thing? This play is a suicide-prevention tool.
  • The Liberation
    Set against the background of terrorist attacks in Paris, The Liberation asks how far women have come from the sexual double standards of the past. Marianne has lost her position as History Professor at a prestigious university, after a trumped up sex scandal, and has moved to Paris to reinvent herself. When she reconnects with her lover from graduate school, over twenty years ago, she will have to question who...
    Set against the background of terrorist attacks in Paris, The Liberation asks how far women have come from the sexual double standards of the past. Marianne has lost her position as History Professor at a prestigious university, after a trumped up sex scandal, and has moved to Paris to reinvent herself. When she reconnects with her lover from graduate school, over twenty years ago, she will have to question who she is and where she wants to go.
  • Sheltered
    I wrote Sheltered after years of volunteer work with homeless women. My purpose was to make these women visible, to allow them to voice a reality most of us would rather ignore. The play uses a Greek chorus of homeless women who shape-shift into stock characters such as cops and outreach workers. The play also tells the story of a volunteer at a homeless shelter looking for her addicted mother, their...
    I wrote Sheltered after years of volunteer work with homeless women. My purpose was to make these women visible, to allow them to voice a reality most of us would rather ignore. The play uses a Greek chorus of homeless women who shape-shift into stock characters such as cops and outreach workers. The play also tells the story of a volunteer at a homeless shelter looking for her addicted mother, their reconnection and ultimate failure to reconcile.
  • Viable
    Why is the American female body still a problem? This triptych of short plays considers the challenge of living like a woman in twenty-first century America.
  • Take It Back
    Jeff gets a surprise when he learns who has bought the plantation he has lost. Taking inspiration from the Republican Party mantra of "taking back" the country, this play is a brief interrogation of white supremacy. With music!